Sub-zero temperatures caused multiple water mains to rupture in Sedalia this weekend, leaving some customers without water as crews struggled through hazardous and challenging conditions.
At North Ohio Avenue and West Hogan Street on Monday, Jan. 15, crews were finishing work on a water main that had been out since Saturday, Jan. 13, leaving residents of Homestead Trailer Park without water.
“That is an ongoing battle going on 36 hours in this area,” First Ward City Councilman Tom Oldham told the Democrat on Monday. “I started working on it Saturday afternoon and by Saturday evening around 7 p.m., we started having equipment failure that unfortunately resulted in a bit of a domino effect and we weren't able to get the infrastructure repairs, the waterlines repaired and then we weren't able to bring in another excavator.”
City supervisors said they were too busy to comment, but workers said some of their equipment was failing due to the extreme cold, causing hydraulic fluid to gel as they battled multiple breaks.
“We’ve been fighting a few of them since early Saturday afternoon,” Oldham said. “That's not a fault of anybody but the weather. We're in some record temps to -9 degrees, I think, before the wind chill, and so that just causes the perfect storm. When you have dangerous temperatures and aging infrastructure, that's going to result in broken pipelines.”
City employee Tevin Egner was back out in the cold Monday, helping to dig up the broken water main.
“Oh, it's horrible,” Egner said of the working conditions.
But the city worker is well-dressed for the job, and not complaining of the cold.
“We're good,” Egner said. “You’ve got to get multiple layers, thermal layers.”
A backhoe from Holem Excavating in Otterville had to be brought in to continue for the frozen city equipment.
“Homestead Trailer Park is just on the line, just on the other side of the city limits,” Oldham explained, “but this resulted from a city water line. I received a call from a homeowner there early Sunday morning and from that call, I started trying to figure out what we could do to get some help there. I reached out to a few organizations and unfortunately, they were unable to do anything at this time.”
Oldham does have one local resource that he thought could help the people of Homestead.
“There's one organization, one church, I knew could help,” Oldham said, “and so I reached out to Councilwoman (Tina) Boggess because one, it's just on the other side of her ward and two, Councilwoman Boggess has been a key player in community engagement and really helping the community out her along with her church, Burns Chapel.”
The trailer park wasn’t even in Ward One, but Boggess knew she could help.
“The mayor had put out an announcement to City Council people, so we knew what was going on as far as the water break was concerned,” Boggess said. “Then Tom reached out to me and said, ‘Hey, this isn't your ward, but I've gotten a couple of phone calls and I just wanted to see what we could do.’ Let me reach out to some entities that I have connections with and see what we can do, and so I did make a phone call and they said, ‘Oh yeah, get them water, absolutely, so the funding was there.”
Boggess and Oldham sourced a pallet of bottled water at Walmart and went to pick it up.
“I didn't know what a pallet was,” Boggess laughed. “When I got out there, they said, ‘these are 40-packs of water, and there’s 48 40-packs,’ and I said, ‘Oh, I think we can get everybody taken care of,’ so we say thank you to Walmart for stepping up and allowing us to purchase that from there.”
There was just the matter of getting the water to the people who needed it.
“I said, now Tom, how am I going to get this water to them?” Boggess said. “He said you already got the water; we’ll figure it out.”
“The fire department went out, picked up the water from Walmart, took it out to the trailer court and of course, everyone was very thankful,” Boggess said. “In times of need, I think it's very important for those that can reach out and do what they can. You wouldn't think that water makes such a difference, but you go 24, 48 hours without water, you'll see it makes a big difference.”
By Monday afternoon, the water main at North Ohio and West Hogan had been repaired, but Oldham warned people to be ready to fend for themselves in hazardous weather conditions.
“It’s important to think about emergency preparedness in situations like this,” Oldham said. “We try to help as much as we can. We can't always get to every person in this community, so please be prepared for inclement weather like this.”
Chris Howell can be reached at 660-530-0146.
